Before she joined the CIA, Mrs. Pollifax thought Red China was a set of dishes.

Mrs. Emily Pollifax of New Jersey goes to the CIA to volunteer for spy duty, being in her own opinion, expendable now that the children are grown and she's widowed. And being just what the department needed (someone who looks and acts completely unlike a spy), she's assigned to simple courier duty to pick up a book in Mexico City. But when the pickup doesn't go as planned, Mrs. Pollifax finds herself handcuffed to a handsome stranger on a plane bound for an Albanian prison. And it's up to her to get them out.